Hunger of Memory

Richard Rodriguez (b. July 31, 1944) is a prominent public intellectual, author, and essayist whose writing is especially concerned with education, minority identity, and language. He earned a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Columbia University, and studied at the doctoral level at the University of California, Berkeley.

In his memoir, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), Rodriguez explores how his education shaped him. Across a prologue and six chapters, Rodriguez traces how being forced to learn English in elementary school forever changed his life. Rodriguez’s parents, both Mexican American, spoke Spanish at home. Until Rodriguez began elementary school, he was surrounded by Spanish. When he was required to learn English, Rodriguez experienced a divide between his parents and the outer world, a divide between the English-speaking public sphere and the Spanish-speaking private sphere. This was a difficult transition for Rodriguez, and the distance it placed between him and his parents was only strengthened by his love for language and literature. The more schooling Rodriguez got, the less he felt connected to his parents and his family’s culture.